AHRQ Announces Availability of Ambulatory Surgery Databases

Press Release Date: June 26, 2000

John M. Eisenberg, M.D., Director of the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) today announced the availability of a new set of databases from the Agency's Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP)—a Federal-State-industry partnership dedicated to building a multi-state data system and making high-quality health care data more readily available to researchers and policy analysts. This new resource—the State Ambulatory Surgery Databases (SASD)—provides data on ambulatory surgery encounters in Colorado, Florida, New Jersey, New York and Utah.

"These ambulatory surgery databases add an important new capacity to research on our changing health care system," said Dr. Eisenberg. "As health care increasingly moves to the outpatient setting, databases with information about access, cost, and quality of care in these new sites are needed to provide a comprehensive picture of health care delivery in the United States."

According to Dr. Eisenberg, SASD will spur research that examines the migration of surgical procedures from inpatient to outpatient settings. For example, how does the distribution of surgical procedures between inpatient and outpatient settings vary by state and by payer? Do outcomes vary by type of setting?

SASD files contain uniformly formatted abstracts from hospital-affiliated ambulatory surgery sites; some include records from freestanding surgery centers as well. Each state database contains a core set of clinical and non-clinical data, including principal and secondary diagnoses and procedures, patient demographics, total charges, discharge status and patients' expected payment source, including Medicare, Medicaid and no insurance. The databases contain hospital identifiers that permit linkages to hospital-level and county-level databases.

SASD files are available for purchase in CD-ROM format from: HCUP Central Distributor, The MEDSTAT Group, 5425 Hollister Avenue, Suite 140, Santa Barbara, CA 93111 (telephone: 805-681-5876; fax: 805-681-5888; E-mail: hcup@medstat.com). The HCUP Central Distributor can also provide data files from the State Inpatient Databases (SID).

For more information, contact AHRQ Public Affairs (301) 427-1364: Bob Isquith, (301) 427-1539 (BIsquith@ahrq.gov).

Internet Citation:

AHRQ Announces Availability of Ambulatory Surgery Databases. Press Release, June 26, 2000. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/news/press/pr2000/ambsurgpr.htm